|
When you get down toward the end of a legislative fight as big, complex, messy, expensive, painful, and politically and economically significant as health care, every day is a wild ride with highs and lows. You never know where you are going to end up on that day, let alone at the very end of the battle. The latest developments in health care are just the latest in this long saga.
The worst moments of the last few days are diving into the details of this godawful Senate Finance Committee bill. It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry. I mean I knew the bill coming out of Finance would be the lowest moment in the debate. I (and everyone else following this debate) have been predicting that since this fight began. But when you look at how bad this thing truly is, it makes your head swim. The bill makes it harder for women to be covered for abortions and legal immigrants to be covered at all. It penalizes employers for hiring poor people. It makes health insurance coverage unaffordable for many middle income people. It taxes high quality insurance plans. It provides no actual competition for private insurance plans, and no check on insurance companies' power. It is just a rotten, rotten bill all the way around, almost certainly worse than existing law, which is hard to do.
On the other hand, a lot of good things have happened this week. The AFL-CIO convention was one big strong pushback against the Baucus bill and in favor of the public option, the highlight of which was AFSCME President Jerry McEntee leading a chant of "Bullshit!" on the convention floor in response to the Baucus bill. At Obama rallies in Minneapolis and College Park, MD, the mere mention of the public option brought waves of uproarious cheers, while the mention by the President of the Baucus plan at the MD rally brought a massive round of loud boos. In the Senate, progressive members of the Finance Committee rebelled against the Baucus bill, likely forcing him to make changes, while a Senate Democratic caucus last night had Baucus retreating. And in the House, Nancy Pelosi once again made clear the importance of a very strong bill including a public option.
One final note I might add. At times in this long and ugly debate, the collective weight of the traditional media's conventional wisdom and signals by various political insiders have made public option advocates a little (or more than a little) discouraged. But I see new life and drive in their efforts- new ads going up by a variety of groups, some big direct action efforts being launched next week, grassroots lobbying efforts picking up steam. And some of them, by the way, are by organizations with very close ties to the White House, like Americans United for Change- if the White House thought the public option was dead, I doubt if AUFC would be making this kind of push.
The Baucus bill is an unmitigated disaster. In the 20-plus years I have been working on the national health care issues, it is easily the worst single bill I have ever seen introduced by a Democratic member of Congress. But it feels like a whole lot of people are beginning to understand that, and that the drive for a good health care bill is alive again.
|
STATE BLOGS
